Sunrise and sunset

Last week I took an early morning trip under the Hudson River to Hoboken so that I could take photos of the sunrise over Manhattan from Frank Sinatra Park. I'd been planning to do this for a few weeks now but it's hard getting up early in the morning when it's so cold! I left the house at 5:45am and took the PATH train to Hoboken, by the time I got there it was already past 6:30 and the sun was starting to rise. I set up my tripod and then it was time to take photos! 

42mm, f/22, ISO 100

Of course the Empire State Building should be the main attraction here, but I was too far to the south to get a good shot of it, the sun rose over an anonymous-looking stretch of buildings instead. Still a Manhattan skyline, though.

27mm, f/22, ISO 100

I took this photo at 6:48, at pretty much the climax. I stayed around for a while after this but this is pretty much as good as it got.

26mm, f/22, ISO 100

A few minutes later, taken at 6:55. The pink colour had mostly gone by this point, but the ferry in the foreground adds a dynamic feeling so I like this one too.

137mm f/22, ISO 100 

I took this at 7:24, just before I started packing up to leave. Since the sun had risen by this point the sky wasn't that interesting, but I took this silhouette photo by zooming on one part of the skyline. I like the way this one turned out, particularly the smoke from the chimney! I almost feel artistic.

My hands were close to freezing by now so it was time to get going, but packing up turned into a routine of putting a few things away, then warming my hands inside my coat, then repeating. The tripod turned out to be more of an obstacle than I expected since it was very cold by this point and painful to handle!

Overall I got a few nice photos out of it and some useful experience. I'll do it again sometime, but probably when it's warmer!

150mm, f/22, ISO 100

I took this photo in the evening from the opposite direction, this is a view of the Erie Lackawanna railway terminal in Hoboken (I took the photographs a little to the right of this picture). The sunset sky turned out to be nicer than the sky at sunrise, but for a lot of the photos I took my camera misjudged the exposure because of the sun and they ended up underexposed, all blue and red. I took this one just after the sun went down and it turned out more-or-less normally. Next time I will pay more attention to the exposure.

(All these photos were taken with either my Olympus 14-42mm or Olympus 40-150mm zoom lenses).

Second-hand lenses and more from Kobe

Since I was very impressed with the sharpness and wide aperture of the Sigma 30mm lens I bought in September, I started thinking about whether it might be worth buying some cheap second-hand prime lenses. The Olympus E-system doesn't have much in the way of prime lenses within my budget, but the earlier Olympus OM system had a wide variety of manual focus lenses that are still floating around. Adorama sells a selection but I figured that it might be worth seeing what I could pick up at used camera shops in Japan first. In preparation I made a list of the interesting-looking OM lenses and sample prices to take with me.

A quick search brought me to a Flickr page with information about used camera shops so it was off to Osaka to see what I could find! The first stop was Yodobashi Camera near JR Umeda station, which doesn't sell used lenses but I wanted to check out. I was hugely impressed. B&H here in New York is certainly great but the Umeda Yodobashi camera surpassed it for me ... being able to walk in with your own camera and try out their sample lenses without even having to ask a sales clerk blew my mind!

Next it was time to look for used camera shops. After searching for a while I found Marushin under JR Umeda station, which has a wide variety of secondhand lenses for various brands, but I didn't feel like spending more than Y12,000 (about $120) for an OM-to-Four Thirds adapter to be able to mount an OM lens on my E-520. I decided to go elsewhere and spent the next hour or so fruitlessly walking around in the rain looking for the next-closest shop, and then checking out a couple of stores I found by accident, before giving up and getting on the subway for Namba. I had planned to go there to take some photos in Nipponbashi but almost as soon as I got out onto the street I came across a branch of the Naniwa Camera chain so I went in. They had an Olympus Zuiko 135mm f/3.5 lens for Y4,000 and an adapter for Y6,000 so for about $100 I was able to pick up a useful-looking lens. The shopkeeper's  explanation of the lens quality was interesting and frank (A+ is like new, A is not so new, A- looks old but works fine, B is good, C is terrible, don't buy it), I settled for a B+ lens. Even though I found out that I had forgotten to put the battery back in my camera after recharging it, I went back to Kobe satisfied!

A couple of days later I decided to see what camera shops in Kobe had to offer and went to Matsumiya Camera near JR Kobe station. I wasn't really sure what to expect but the store took me by surprise:

Matsumiya Camera, Kobe, 16mm f/5.6, ISO 100

That's the entire storefront, taken with my Olympus 14-42mm lens, but the inside of the store was even more surprising: it was stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes, cameras and display cases for lenses, and there was only room for three people inside, including the owner! During the thirty minutes or so that I was there was usually a line of people waiting outside the door to get in. Once I got inside I asked the owner if he had any Olympus OM lenses and he pointed me to a display case, I noted the 50mm f/1.8 and 200mm f/5 lenses and asked if I could try out the 200mm. He took it out of the case and helped me put it on the camera and then suggested I go outside and try it out. It was very sharp but I decided to pass on it since there is also an f/4 version available, and tried out the 50mm:

Matsumiya Camera, 50mm f/1.8, ISO 100

Apart from the row of cameras at the top, those are all lenses! The image quality isn't so great, but I didn't know what I was doing with the lens at that point, it's much sharper than that. I tried it out for a few minutes and decided that for Y3,500 it wasn't such a bad buy. This time I had to wait in line for five minutes before I could actually pay for it, though.

I had an hour or so to kill so I wandered in the direction of the main shopping district, on the way I came across an interesting shopping arcade underneath an elevated railway line. These arcades under railway lines are a feature of Japanese cities but this was under a small suburban line so it was a small arcade, filled with small speciality shops:

Shop window, Kobe, 30mm f/2, ISO 100 

This is the back window (facing outside the arcade) of a shop selling electrical goods. These seem to be old electrical fittings.

Right after I took this photograph, as I was getting my bearings after crossing a street I was approached by an elderly gentleman (he looked like he was in his seventies) who seemed to want to talk to me about something or other. I had trouble following exactly what he was trying to get at, though at one point he said, "It's good that you understand Japanese" (I hadn't said much at that point though I guess I'd been nodding as he was speaking). Then he suggested that we could go to a yakiniku (barbecue) restaurant around the corner, so I declined as politely as I could, but I felt rather sorry for him, since I imagine he must have been rather lonely to strike up a conversation with an obvious foreigner. A few minutes later I saw him walking along beside some woman who I suppose he had also accosted. To put this in perspective, on the train from Tokyo to Kobe I sat next to a businessman for an hour and a half who studiously ignored me, despite the fact that I was trying my best to read a newspaper in Japanese and he was reading an English language textbook.

Shoes, Kobe, 30mm f/2, ISO 100

This is another one of the shops in the arcade. It's hard to be sure, but only the right shoe of each pair seems to be on display (which makes sense from a space-saving point of view, if you think about it). When I showed my wife this photo she said "That's a good one!".

Update: Since people seem to be coming to this post looking for camera stores in Kobe, here's the address of Matsumiya Camera: Shin-Kobe Building, 2-8 Aioichou 2, Chuo Ward, Kobe (near Kobe Station, map). I also have a post with some more details (and a better map) from a later visit.

Kobe

After staying in Tokyo for a few days we went to Kobe, where we had more time for sightseeing (and taking photos).

Kobe Port Tower, 30mm f/1.8, ISO 200

This is a view of the Kobe Port Tower, which you can buy on a postcard, from the neighbourhood of JR Sannomiya station. Right behind me there's a long shopping arcade that runs for several blocks of all kinds of shops, which was a good place to take cover on a rainy day like this. Since I took this photo at dusk it wasn't quite dark yet, which gives the sky a dark blue colour that turned out nicely. I like taking photos after it's been raining but it usually happens by accident!

Gaya-in Temple, 30mm f/2, ISO 100

When we visited a temple near where we were staying my wife suggested that I should take this photo, and it was a good excuse to try out the depth of field from using a wide aperture on my new lens.

Engyo-ji Temple, 30mm f/2, ISO 100

We also visited Mount Shosha near Himeji (site of the famous castle, which I would have posted a photo of, but it's currently under renovation) and took the cable car up to Engyo-ji Temple. As soon as we went in I knew I had to take a photo of this scene, this is one of may favourite photos from the whole trip.

Engyo-ji Temple, 30mm f/2, ISO 200

I'd wanted to take a photo like this for ages, and this was the perfect chance.

Engyo-ji Temple, 30mm f/8, ISO 200

Experimenting with a "frame-within-a-frame" effect. I like the frame and the shadows but overall it's a bit on the drab side.

Tokyo streets

At the end of October last year we went to Japan and I took the opportunity of a free evening in Tokyo to take a walk along the Yamanote train line and take some night photos. Having a good lens for low-light photos was one of the reasons I bought the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens I mentioned in the previous post, and I think it turned out to perform pretty well.

Zojo-ji Temple, 30mm f/2

The main entrance to a temple near the hotel where we were staying. I should have paid more attention to the elements in the frame when I took this, it would have been more interesting with someone in the frame to give a sense of scale, and I should have moved a little to cut out the traffic light on the left. Of the photographs I took this turned out to have the best focus, and the colours turned out nicely!

Izakaya in Kanda, 30mm, f/4

An izakaya (restaurant with food that goes well when you're drinking, seafood in this case) under the Yamanote line tracks -- that's a train passing overhead. It was a happy coincidence that the waiter came out just as I was taking the photo.

Izakaya in Kanda, 30mm f/2.8

Another izakaya, this one specialising in grilled chicken (yakitori, a favourite of mine). This caught my eye because of the colours and the regularly-spaced lanterns at the top.

Akihabara station, 30mm f/2.8

I turned around once I reached Akihabara, the electronics district (though now it seems to be overrun with manga-type stuff). Since it was already past 10pm everything was closing up so I decided to to head back. Waiting for the train I took this photo, I guess the woman standing on the platform had just missed the previous train since she's the only one who doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Monroe's House, Yurakucho, 30mm f/2.8

As soon as I got off the train I spotted this little place under the train line. Since Japanese company employees often go out drinking after work before heading home on the train, streets around train stations often have bars and restaurants for the thirsty office worker. Yurakucho is no exception.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4

Back in September I started thinking about whether it was worth investing in a new lens. The Olympus 14-42mm which I was using most of the time is decent but since it has a maximum aperture of f/3.5 it's not well suited to low-light photography, and the sensor on my E-520 seems to be very noisy at high ISO (above 200). Thinking ahead to a trip we were taking to Japan in a few months, I started looking around for a cheap prime lens (something like the 50mm f/1.8s you can get for Canon and Nikon cameras) but it turns out that Olympus doesn't make anything comparable! The closest is the 50mm f/2.0 macro, but that's $440 (versus $100-$130 for the comparable Canon and Nikon lenses). Everybody raves about its sharpness but I was more worried about the cost.

Looking around, it turned out that Olympus isn't the only company making lenses for the Four Thirds mount it uses on its DSLRs: there are also lenses available from Panasonic and Sigma. I looked into the Sigma 30mm f/1.4, which is pricy (also $440) but has a wider maximum aperture. I spent a long time reading up on the two and thinking about the pros and cons: the Olympus is supposedly super-sharp and it's a macro lens; the Sigma has a shorter focal length (I had a feeling that with the Four Thirds 2x crop factor, 50mm would be hard to use, since it's longer than the maximum focal length of my 14-42mm lens). The potential downside of the Sigma that worried me was that their lenses have a reputation on online forums for "poor quality control".

I went for the Sigma and paid a visit to B&H to pick one up. I was initially very pleased but it turned out that the one I bought had focusing problems at wide apertures (it was fine manually-focused). I called Sigma's service centre out on Long Island and the service guy was very helpful, he said that they will correct the problem for free, but it takes 10 days, and you have to send the camera as well as the lens to get a short turnaround time. He also said that since Sigma is a third-party manufacturer they have to reverse-engineer cameras to get their lenses to work with them (and by implication, they can get caught out by changes in camera design), which rings truer to me than "poor quality control". I didn't really want to risk that since the trip to Japan was rapidly approaching, so I called B&H and it turned out they had another lens at their warehouse which they brought in for me. The second lens (with a higher serial number) turned out to focus with no problems, and I haven't had any regrets about buying it.

I use the Sigma 30mm as my "standard" lens most of the time now in place of the 14-42mm Olympus I was using before, except when I want to take zoom or wide-angle shots. I've also found that the 30mm confuses people if you ask them to take a picture for you, people seem to expect a zoom, and the  longer-than-average focal length creates additional problems, so for sightseeing snaps the 14-42mm is the better bet. Technically the 30mm is very sharp, though if I'm going for sharpness I take photos at f/2 or above. It does have some problems autofocusing at wide apertures if there isn't a lot of available light, and it's slow and sometimes can't get a focus lock, so in those cases I focus manually. The wide aperture comes in very handy for portraits.